"You can't fix it. You can't make it go away.
I don't know what you're going to do about it,
But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just
going to walk away from it. Maybe
A small part of it will die if I'm not around
feeding it anymore."
--Lew Welch

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

The new play draft is moving right along. I'm feeling engaged but also a tad irrelevant: this play is writng itself. It seems to have come to me fully formed. I'm not a writer. I'm a secretary. A fascinating journey, in which I feel like a passenger.

#76. Who would've thunk it? Not I, that's for sure. Something of a miracle to still be standing with my faculties, more or less.

And with a gift! I've been visited by the Muse of Theater, which is extraordinary. We parted great friends some years ago. But certain stories require certain ways to tell them, and an amazing idea for a contemporary story about my "dancing on the Titanic" theme popped into my head without invitation, I started fiddling with it, and now I have 17 pages of script I really like, a structure and concept I really like, and I know my ending. Not sure how to get there yet but I'll figure it out. A new play. Extraordinary. Title, HUNGER STRIKES, with its double meaning.

No details at this time. Not sure I'll finish it, don't want to use energy on anything but developing it. But I'll say this: a cast of five, and American Indian history plays a prominent role. In a sense, this is Titanic Lite, the themes of my complex prose work in development delivered in a more traditional format. You sit in the dark and watch. Not hyperdrama ha ha!

I'm writing this on Celtx Script in the Kindle Fire, and it is working like a charm.

Nothing special planned for the birthday. Stopped that years ago. In fact, only got and only will get one card ... from Harriet. In fact, the housekeeper is here today, so I'm spending hours in the basement office, which is good, I already updated some web pages with my canon hypertext link. And I'm sure I'll do some writing. Already did some banking, too. H used to be the banker. I don't particularly like doing it but I at least REMEMBER doing it. We got in trouble when she did money things and then forgot, so I took it all over. Most of it is automatic, actually. But I keep a close watch on everything.

Eager for the WS to start. Not rooting for anyone. 7 games, I hope.

Sketch been acting weird ... at first, thought it was something physical but no longer, it seems to be psychological, if that makes sense for a dog. Comes and goes, like a mood. Watching him closely.

RUSSIA
Undersea cables seen as critical, vulnerable New York Times | 275 words WASHINGTON - Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some U.S. military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Jim Plunkett traveled a long, hard road to Super Bowl glory - and now he's paying the price. Plunkett led the Raiders to two championships, but only after he endured seven years of punishment on bad Patriots and 49ers teams. He spent eight more seasons with the Raiders, enjoying long-sought success but still absorbing countless crunching hits. This explains the lingering pain he feels today, at age 67. Plunkett has had 18 surgeries, including two knee replacements, one shoulder replacement and several operations on his back and neck.

Whatever else one might say, Amazon has the best customer service, hands down, than any company I've ever dealt with. Numerous experiences - including an online chat tonight - to back this up. Extraordinary, really.

Picked up used paperback of THE LAST GOOD TIME, high on my fav novel list. Good film, too, also very hard to find. No cultural class to honor these gems. I was mad to try to write seriously here. Should have left the country in my 20s or 30s. Well, managed somehow to survive anyway. Here I am.

Mariners hire Servais
Chronicle News Services | 398 words
The Seattle Mariners hired former Giants catcher Scott Servais as their manager Friday, giving the job to someone with ties to the new front office but no experience running a team.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Terrific movie! First, an old-fashioned Cold War political thriller, in the Graham Greene tradition. Of special interest to me because I was in the Army Security. Agency, a young Russian linguist, during much of the story's action.

My novella Baumholder 1961 focuses on the more surrealistic aspects of my military experience. Also in paperback.

The moment you start bringing your personal belief system into governance, then that’s the end of pluralistic democracy. We have words for governance like that and they’re called dictatorships. You have a belief system, you have a philosophy, and that philosophy has some adherence and others have their own philosophies. Those are your personal truths. One of them is, “Jesus is your Savior.” I’m not going to say that Jesus is not your savior. That is your personal truth. But, in a country where we have different religions, if the person who said: “Jesus is your Savior” is going to govern a pluralist country, then their legislations must be based on objective truths, not personal truths.

And personal truths are not only religious. You can have political personal truths. You keep those to yourself or your political group. But, to impose them on others is to do away with the freedom that a free democracy gives you. Now, getting back to your point, we have people in Congress whose job is to pass laws. If they pass laws based on things that are not objectively true, that’s the beginning of the end of an informed democracy.

I misread the clock, thought I was getting up at common time of 3. Oops, it was 2.

Iced coffee and toast hit the spot anyway.

My favorite time of the day: peace and quiet!

WS teams could be decided today.

Been writing a bit, dabbling, no pressure. Not sure I'll do the LABOR to finish anything.

Heard from daughter of wonderful grad school neighbors, obits of each parent, not released until both passed. Very special friends at the time, then lost touch. It happens, takes effort for it not to happen. A wonderful, happy, hallucinated period of my life.

The prof who hired me has cancer, with wife keeping a blog, moving, filled with support from family and friends. Reminds me how little of both I have. My passing will be like an anonymous leaf dropping from a tree. My priorities in life gather dust in archives.

This morning I wrote the first two sentences of a short story. A title popped into my head: NOW AND THEN. An old man, of course, a title full of multiple meanings. We'll see if I finish it. I've been thinking of returning to the short form where I began. More manageable. In practical terms, they are best to launch a career ... agents were writing me for a novel after my short stories began to appear and win awards in the late 60s, early 70s, but by then I had fled to playwriting.

I have another beginning I like, written right after H's heart attack. Two stories that are "new" to me and short enough to manage. Maybe I'll givem them a dance.

Old age is something new, that's for sure ... well, not in the universe but to the individual. The lost purse experience was scary. H found it before she totally lost it, thank the gods.

I worry about it. She also is beginning to lose her balance. She is older than I am and it shows.

Baking bread, then buttermilk rolls. Something positive done today!

*

For kicks, looked up PRISM INTERNATIONAL. When I began writing short fiction, I wanted to publish here and in THE LITERARY REVIEW because these two had international audiences and content and were highly respected. I made both.

Well, I discovered the archives there have just been digitized! I added a link to my 3 stories there in another post. They have become very high tech ... prefer online submissions, for example. In my day, they paid $5 a printed page ... now it's $20. If I finish a story, I may send it there.

Overdue books: Portland State University librarians in Oregon finally got their hands on two overdue books - a half century after they were checked out. Someone put two books checked out in 1963 into a book drop, accompanied by an anonymous note. The note acknowledges that the books are "outdated - yes - but I'll let you decide their fate now."

Tomorrow night's UCLA game at Stanford may be the Bruin's game of the year. They got their reality check with a loss. Now how can they grow from it? If they can win, the growth will be significant. I think they have a shot, despite injuries. We'll see.

"This is really happening. The Arctic and the glaciers are melting. The oceans are rising and acidifying. The corals are bleaching, the great forests dying and burning. The storms and floods, the droughts and heat waves, are intensifying. The farms and savannahs are parched and drying. Nations are disappearing. People are dying. Mass extinction is unfolding. And all of it sooner and faster than science predicted."

Whenever I begin to worry that I'm getting lazy and doing too little "constructive activity" in my old age, I just have to glance at my literary archive to think, How in hell could I write so much in one lifetime? I was obsessive 24/7 for half a century! Forgive me if I poop out now ha ha.

But progress actually continues, just very slowly. Picked up the uke again, banjo progress, novel brooding, a new dvd project (grunt work).

Afghan hospital bombing: MSF labels US airstrike a war crime as it withdraws staff

"Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body,” Stokes said. “Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient.”http://gu.com/p/4d2vb?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Bloggeroid

I keep pinching myself: surely American politics is an absurd comedy playing out in a dream. Fleshed humans of such ignorance and dishonesty would never be taken seriously - unless, of course, the culture itself was as sick. I keep pinching myself but I never wake up.

Earlier blog (archived)

ENTERTAINMENTS

Career Support

"Charles' impact on Northwest literature and theater over the past twenty-plus years is impressive. As a critic I've followed his work since the early 1980s, and no playwright has had such an important or long-lasting effect on this community's cultural life." --Bob Hicks, Senior Critic (retired), The Oregonian

"During the years we've worked together, I feel Charles was the clearest and most important theatre voice in Oregon." --Steve Smith, Artistic Director (retired), Theatre Workshop

"This play has balls!" -- Anonymous young man, shouting in the dark before curtain call for Country Northwestern.

2006
Finalist, Mystery of the Year (Foreword Magazine), for Dead Body In A Small Room.

2007
Begin making digital films. Deconstructing Sally, perhaps the best of the bunch ("Deconstructing Sally has voice: It’s a good example of how skillful and individualistic democratic filmmaking can be.")

2008Changing Key, a video hyperdrama and lecture-demonstration presented to national hypertext conference.